The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity • Hacker News Board

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#31

Post by stcredzero » Sat, May 21, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

sgentle wrote: post #12

This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. Just in case, I will critique in the spirit of the original article: The first immutable law of madeupistan is that this article makes no sense. If one quantifies by Q the amount of sense this article doesn't make, and divides it by L, which is how badly the sense it doesn't make is,…

This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head.

I was just talking to my sister about kitsch, camp, and punk, and how all of those scenes were misunderstood by a certain subpopulation who didn't catch the irony. "Animal House" was pure parody. I can tell you that a lot of fellow undergrads emulated it, and not everyone caught the joke. And sometimes, some people are so enthusiastically applying irony to everything, they forget about basic decency. (I admit to making mistakes in both directions.)

I suspect that a study of what people actually read would reveal that "fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience" is about par for the course. Most diet movements fit this description, yet how many billions of dollars have been wasted on them? One can't even get the general public to apply something as basic as the laws of thermodynamics without making huge mistakes. A lot of people are no better off applying basic physical laws than thinking they should make more sacrifices to Zeus.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567081

http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/

The takeaway here is that we're evolved to deal with the problems and lives of cavemen. It's only through some accidents of talent and diligence that some of us are able to understand things above and beyond that level.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#32

Post by stcredzero » Sat, May 21, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #4

vimes656 wrote: post #2

Sometimes stupidity is indistinguishable from pure evilness. That's why I believe it's more practical to focus on removing inefficiency instead of corruption.

I suspect that humanities worst moments come from a combination of evil and stupidity, even if that stupidity is just a failure to predict what your actions will actually mean for others.

I suspect that humanities [sic] worst moments come from a combination of evil and stupidity

Witness:

    - Failure of military leaders to recognize the implications 
      of advancing firearms technology starting in the Civil War
    - Failure of national governments to recognize the geopolitical instability
      embodied by the competing systems of alliances prior to WWI
    - Failure of national governments to recognize the economic and political
      instability caused by treaties prior to WWII
    - Disconnect of German leadership from reality through advocacy of 
      economic and biological pseudoscientific theories 
    - Disconnect of Soviet leadership from social and economic reality

It seems that the caveman-mob level of broken thinking we exhibit as national groups caused all sorts of technology-amplified havoc in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I wonder if it's any better in the 21st century?

    - Burgeoning US debt, and the political impediments to solving it
    - Calamitous global environmental changes, also accompanied by political
      impediments to solution

What are the odds of solving our current problems without bloodshed? Probably very near zero. The best we can hope for is to limit the scope of bloodshed to militants, small regional conflicts, and assassinations. After all, we are still mostly just mobs of tribal cavemen.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#33

Post by stcredzero » Sat, May 21, 2011, 7:00 PM UTC

sunsu wrote: post #20

reminds me of the Wizards First rule: "People are stupid...given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."

That's just a paraphrase of Herman Goering:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#34

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 21, 2011, 7:00 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #18

ableal wrote: post #3

The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. We could always start with 100% and see how it goes. I suspect this upper bound method was applied by more than one writer. Never mind the quibbles, it's good to see this one back. As the footnote says, there's genius in…

I believe the point here goes along the lines: ``instinctively, one perceives the fraction as (N-1 / N)'' -- where N is size of the group in question and the -1 is oneself... Which curiously renders oneself as a not-very-smart one. Which suggests one underestimated the fraction ;-) Especially as the two supporting points (a: unpleasant letdowns; b: frequent bothering ``at the wrong moment'') are quite subjective. To…

[deleted]

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#35

Post by tokenadult » Sat, May 21, 2011, 7:39 PM UTC

"The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."

This is assuredly true, on the basis of replicated research, with regard to IQ. There is essentially no correlation between IQ and rationality.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1/Engli...

High-IQ people can be every bit as irrational ("stupid" in the language of the submitted article) as low-IQ people, and worse still, not notice that they are being stupid. There are whole books on the subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Smart-People-Can-Stupid/dp/0300101...

http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make-Decisions/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes-Without/dp/076792...

http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Beha...

http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expande...

All we can do about that here on HN is take other people's comments seriously and try to see ourselves as others see us as we ponder our decisions.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#36

Post by lionhearted » Sat, May 21, 2011, 8:15 PM UTC

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #27

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it!

You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, lose/lose, or win/lose behavior.

He calls those "helpless", "intelligent", "stupid", and "bandit" - but normal definitions of stupidity and intelligence don't really apply, as he notes that Nobel laureates often engage in stupid (lose/lose) behavior, despite being intelligent under normal definitions.

Your comment here? It's a pretty good example of lose/lose behavior - it's designed to be a bit of a jerk towards me and makes you look snarky in the process. Lose/lose. So yeah dude, stop doing that ;)

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#37

Post by Natsu » Sat, May 21, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

> A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

You have to be careful with the "deriving no gain" part, though. In game theory, it's valid to punish someone by incurring a loss if they're trying to gain at everyone else's expense. That's used in the Tit-for-Tat strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma, for example.

Granted, you can say that it's for the sake of future gain, rather than present gain, but there are times when our lack of knowledge about the circumstances can lead us to commit the fundamental attribution error. Are they "stupid" or are there circumstances of which we're unaware? Of course, if you have the misfortune of knowing them for long enough, it's generally not that hard to figure out which is which.

One law I didn't see, though, is that we all do stupid things sometimes.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#38

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 21, 2011, 9:00 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #36

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart. You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it! You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, los…

[deleted]

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#39

Post by ksolanki » Sat, May 21, 2011, 9:02 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

This is entertaining read, but there is some irony there.

Should add one more law. "A stupid person almost always is not aware of his/her stupidity, and often thinks others are stupid."

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#40

Post by sirclueless » Sat, May 21, 2011, 9:34 PM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #14

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

the bandit on the upper half isn't necessarily unpleasant. we applaud when someone manages to make money from stupid people. value transferred from stupid people to intelligent people is an important aspect of wealth creation on a society wide level. after all, stupid people often destroy what wealth they manage to get. but I agree with the conclusion of the article. It is an important measure of a society whether ba…

> stupid people often destroy what wealth they manage to get.

Usually by giving it to bandits.